Mobile World Congress

Barcelona, Spain | February 24 - 28, 2013

New Vinson App Offers A Vision of Mobile TV If It Was Crammed Into An iPad

Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Monday, February 25th, 2013
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Remember “mobile TV”, whatever that was? No we don’t either, but that’s not about to deter new startup Vinson which is launching their their new mobile OTT (Over The Top) TV app on iOS for broadcasters, content aggregators and content distributors at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Essentially this is watching live TV on a tablet, with the full TV guide, plus PVR/time-shifting, plus “social” features for shared watching experiences. They’ve basically crammed a vision of the future TV into an app, and it looks pretty good.

Focused on a “swiping” experience, the app is free to use by broadcasters without any license fees, plus they can request a free branded version of the Vinson app.

One of the first customers to use the platform is a joint venture of Belgium broadcasters that developed a mobile TV solution for the Belgium market, branded as the name “Stievie”.

CEO Vinson Michael Plein says “Mobile clients just didn’t work well and they were just not affordable for many broadcasters and distributors. We have built this solution from the ground up.” One of the co-founders is Raimo van der Klein, one of the former founders of the the Layar augmented reality startup.

The showcase app for iPhone and iPad launches this week in Barcelona. Check it out below.

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